Like many Southerners I received a jolt today around 12:30 p.m. EDT, when I heard and felt a distinct thudding and shaking at my house in Atlanta. After running to my window to make sure no one was breaking and entering, I ventured to the front porch to see if I’d received a delivery—a big delivery, like a furniture-sized box someone had spiked onto my doorstep. (Incidentally a small package was sitting there, and I looked askance at it for a moment.)
By the time I got back to my desk, my Ring app was pinging with neighbors asking one another if they’d felt the earthquake. Another earthquake in Atlanta? (Many residents had felt the tremors of a 4.1-magnitude quake that hit Tennessee just last month.)
I consulted Google, which returned an ominous message: “There are reports of nearby shaking. Check back as more information becomes available.” Social media offered more validation, as posters described their experiences:
But an hour later, the online chatter had gotten much more interesting…and included visuals. This was no earthquake.
It appeared that a meteor may have lit up the midday sky over Georgia, South Carolina, and surrounding Southern states. And not just a meteor, but a fireball (yes, that’s the official term for a meteor brighter than the planet Venus). A NOAA satellite captured the flash of the probable fireball as it crossed Earth’s atmosphere:
Though fireballs blaze across the sky every day, most go unnoticed over oceans or remote lands or while people sleep, and seeing one is a once-in-a-lifetime event, according to the American Meteor Society. Witnessing a fireball large enough to generate a sonic boom is even rarer, and observing a meteorite-causing fireball is more improbable still. (A meteorite is a chunk of space rock that collides with the Earth’s surface.) The last meteorite recovered in Georgia landed in Cartersville in 2009; South Carolina hasn’t claimed one since 1933.
Did a lucky (or unlucky) Southerner find one today? According to the National Weather Service, a resident of Henry County in metro Atlanta reported that a rock fell through the roof of their home around the same time as the fireball sighting.
As for the mysterious thudding I felt at my house, it could have been the sonic boom shaking the framing. Or it might have been a meteorite fragment plunging to the ground somewhere in my neighborhood. You can bet I’m keeping an eye out, just in case.
